Zuzana Čaputová, the Vice Chairman of Progresivne Slovensko, a Slovak liberal party, is very likely to become the first female president in the history of the country. Her success is one of many signs that liberals in Slovakia are growing stronger again.
The Law and Justice party did not win the election in 2015 because it had had a good political program, but because those who were supposed to defend freedom turned out not to be too devoted to their cause.
On the whole, CEE countries – including Poland – still positively stand out in this respect among its European peers. Yet, this might soon come to an end as Poland’s governing party (LAw and Justice) is planning to introduce significant restrictions on Sunday trade.
In the times of Polish People’s Republic, when religion and all other key aspects of Polish identity were being actively supressed, the interests of the Catholic Church in Poland as an institution and the interests of raison d’etat were aligned to a great extent. Today it is not the case.
Laurels shall be awarded to a smooth transition in the party and the government after Donald Tusk left for Brussels. First, he ensured not having any ‘number two’ in Civic Platform (he devoted the last two years to getting rid of Grzegorz Schetyna). Next, out of the blue, before the internal opposition was able to react and close its ranks in time, he appointed Ewa Kopacz to take his place.
There are two processes going on in the Polish reality, which at a first glance may seem to exclude one another. On the one hand, there is a mass decrease in the number of church-going believers (circa 2-4 millions in the last few years), and on the other, there is the phenomenon of overtaking the “moral” discourse in Poland by extreme groups related to Church.
Here you are – XXI century, modern-day Poland: the smartest minds of the Catholic Church care about preventing the spread of the disease called gender theory, or as they refer to it – gender ideology, as they proclaim it is not compatible with the scientific standards at all.
In all the established democratic Western societies, the very popular and charismatic pontificate of Pope John Paul II did not interrupt, or even slow down, the pace of the secularisation process.
